Ron House

New Wave as the Next Guy

Spare Me

Ron House is art damage. Art damage in a Jackson Pollack in a temper tantrum kicking a bucket of paint over the canvas and out the window kind of way. I’m tempted to say that New Wave as the Next Guy is a document of a Columbus, Ohio scene during 1978-1981, but it’s much more than that. This sort of early new/no-wave stuff has a naïve power to it that still rings true about 20 years later. The primitive synths, scraping (they weren’t buzzsaws quite yet) guitar, and whatever meandering accompaniment they could find manages to get along purely on goofy-grins and bizarre lyrics.

Ron House was actually the leader of two bands, Moses CarryOut and the Twisted Shouts. The lineups seemed to be fairly fluid, but the music has the Cold War urgency that the no-wave scene thrived on (This Heat, DNA, Chrome, etc.) The word “tune” does not come to mind when listening to Ron House’s voice, “Where the Windows Are” has that despair that sounds like Ron House was a kindred spirit to Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. Through all of the weirdness and awful fidelity on New Wave as the Next Guy, these raw, bare bones songs remain intensely poignant.